A smartphone is a device that can take care of a user's handheld computing and communication needs in a single, small package. Today, the use of smartphones is becoming increasingly more popular with many individuals. For instance, total shipments in 2010 of smartphone devices were 302.6 million units, up 74.4 percent from 2009. Unlike traditional cell phones, smartphones allow individuals to install, configure, and run applications of their choosing. Similar devices that are becoming increasingly popular are digital tablets. Today's tablet users represent 12 percent of the United States internet population between ages eight and sixty-four. This number is projected to grow to 23 percent by early 2012, a group representing an estimated 54 million people.
Many applications are made available for such devices that users may download and install on their devices. These applications may perform a variety of functions that may aid individuals in their personal and business lives. For example, applications may be made available for providing information on local weather, conducting personal banking transactions, as well as work-related tasks such as accessing, sending, and drafting work-related emails and documents and/or keeping tracking of business related expenses.
Many individuals ship packages for both personal and business reasons. Typically, an individual must fill out one or more forms and/or shipping labels for the package and provide the package to a common carrier for shipment. The common carrier will then take the package and enter the information from the forms and/or shipping labels in the carrier's systems and provide a tracking number to the individual so that the individual may track the package while shipping with the common carrier. For instance, consider the following scenario in which an individual wishing to ship a package arrives at a common carrier's “drop box” collection point and obtains a Paper Shipping Manifest (PSM) form from the box. After writing the required information on the form, the individual affixes the form to the package, and places the package in the “drop box.” Subsequent tracking of the package requires an individual to key enter the form's tracking number in the common carrier's tracking application. In addition, if the individual would like to receive notification of certain events that occur during shipping, such as a shipment delay or delivery, the user must perform additional transactions with the common carrier's systems to request notification of these events. Further, if the individual needs the information for the shipment incorporated into another application such as an expense account, the individual must typically enter such information into the application manually. Therefore, a need exists in the art for an application that can facilitate shipping functionality from an individual's wireless computing device.